DIY: Red Carpet Dress
There's been a few questions on how I made my red carpet wrap skirt, so I've drawn some step-by-step instructions below. If this helps you make a dress, please send or tag me photos!
Here’s how I did it…
I started with 5 yards of printed rayon, it came 60" tall off the roll and to maximize the length of my dress I didn't trim any fabric off.
All this fabric needed to be reduced from 5 yards to my waist circumference (plus an additional 8 inches to overlap in the front).
I did this by gathering, folding, and ruffling the fabric repeatedly, trying to keep all of the bulk on the hips and butt and leaving the two ends untouched so that they can overlap nicely and flat over the stomach. Here's a visual of how the fabric is folded, but in reality there was much more folding than this.
Once it was completely folded, I added a hand stitch along the top edge to lock all the folds in place.
The next step was to sew the velvet ribbon to the top, right sides touching, so that when the velvet ribbon was flipped upwards it would become the waistband. I left at least 3 feet of ribbon hanging out on both sides to give me enough ribbon for tying.
Now the skirt can be tied! I hold up the skirt to wrap it around my behind, bring the two ribbon ends together in the front to overlap, then continue to let the ribbons meet again in the back where they can be tied into a shoelace bow.
There should be an 8" overlap in the front and you can rotate the skirt to place the overlap on the desired leg.
Currently, the overlapping portion does not allow any leg to be visible. To create some distance between the fabric to show the leg, I cut on an angle away from the overlap to create an opening.
After the overlapping layers have been trimmed to reveal an opening, velvet ribbon can be added to finish off the raw cut edges. I attached the velvet and skirt fabric right sides together along the entire cut edge and sewed the velvet to the inside of the waistband.
The last step is to hem the bottom. I get a crisp hem by folding the fabric a half inch, adding a straight stitch, then folding it again and sealing it with a second straight stitch.
Now you’re red carpet ready! Comment below if you have any questions!
